I can’t give more approval for this woman, she handled everything so well.
The backstory is that Cloudflare overhired and wanted to reduce headcount, rightsize, whatever terrible HR wording you choose. Instead of admitting that this was a layoff, which would grant her things like severance and unemployment - they tried to tell her that her performance was lacking.
And for most of us (myself included) we would angrily accept it and trash the company online. Not her, she goes directly against them. It of course doesn’t go anywhere because HR is a bunch of robots with no emotions that just parrot what papa company tells them to, but she still says what all of us wish we did.
(Warning, if you’ve ever been laid off this is a bit enraging and can bring up some feelings)
This. I don’t think people here realize that HR doesn’t really have a say in this, they aren’t the ones deciding on the firing and they aren’t the ones who can undo it since they aren’t the ones providing the team’s budget.
HR’s job in these situations is to do the dirty part: handle the announcement to each employee and damage control if necessary.
The girl in the video is saying that her manager was “pleased” with her work and she didn’t understand why strangers in the HR department are doing the announcement to her: that’s the whole point, it’s very likely that it’s that “nice” manager who threw you under the bus when he had to make a choice on which people he needs to keep after top management told him to downsize his team but he didn’t have the guts to tell you that personally.
We’re all complicit, but HR volunteered to be complicit.
Get paid to*. This is labour and we’re all exploited.
Companies like this often hire external consultants to do the layoffs. They literally have no skin in the game.